Random vs Non-Random Char-Gen

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The problem with random character generation is that you may end up with a completely useless character.

There has to be some mechanism to get that character to basic competence in at least the core skill that they are supposed to have.
Just add a default points spread option. If you don't like the rolls. take the template. It's easy, although perhaps not satisfying.
 
Random or point buy is simply a preference, there is no objective "best". Bad rules are bad rules and you can find poorly written games that use both types of chargen.

Personally I lean towards point buy (big surprise with my love of HERO and GURPS) but I often dislike the optional point buy systems tacked onto random generation game systems. There are times where I prefer random generation, CoC, RQ and D&D being good examples, but I'm less of a fan when the GM is a stickler for one roll, live with it.

Random chargen does offer speed and easier entry. Even a simple point buy system requires the player know enough about the rules to make decisions on where to spend the points. Random can be as simple as toss your dice and start playing, although there are usually some decisions to be made. For somebody having a bout of serious indecisiveness random can be awesome. It is tough to point buy a character when you have no idea what you want to play.

Nobody should be forced to play a character they loathe to the point they are going to suicide the PC at the first opportunity, just let them re-roll until they get something decent. Of course the player that will keep rolling until no stat is under 15 is as much of a problem as the one roll GM.

Good rules in a random generation game will have mechanics that work to make playable characters, poor rules don't.

Except it kind of is in a random chargen. So both V&V and Golden Hetoes are supers RPGs where the random portion of chargen reduces the need for any system mastery. You get what you get and then try to make it work.
I love Champions but a lot of that had to do with getting in on it right as 2nd edition came out. The number of powers, effect, limitations and disadvantages we're smaller then they ultimately would become so it was easier and less intimidating to get started. I took one look at many peoples beloved 4th edition Hero Games Champions and said "Oh hell no!" I didn't even want to look through that much just to figure out what had or had not changed. Some of it is just psychological. Big books of lists are intimidating to try to master. The bigger the worse.
I mean in my mind I look at a lot of the new stuff coming out and think man that's too much just to get into a game.

HERO gets too wrapped up in do anything you want. It would benefit significantly by putting together common popular set ups, and leave the minutiae available for those who want some truly custom power. In many ways 3rd Ed was the peak for the system largely because it had this attitude of here are some popular options, don't worry about how it works, along with go look at the Champions rules if you want to make more of your own. 4th and 5th ed moved away from that and made the whole game a cut away diagram.


If HERO was a ship :wink:

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There have to be better ways to do random creation than just flat rolling attributes. In fact, I find I it hard to think of a worse approach.

Even if I was rolling for D&D, I'd come up with a range of interesting attribute distributions (not necessary finely mechanically balanced but all 'viable' and interesting in at least some way - nothing boring like all 6-8s or 15-18s.) and put them on a chart and let someone roll on that chart.

The key here is to have a random system that doesn't 'fail' a significant proportion of the time.

While it had issues the concept in Unearthed Arcana of rolling a different number of dice for each stat based on class is a great example of possible options. Allowing prime class stats to roll 2d6+6 rather than 3d6 would be another example. Allowing prime stats for the class to be pushed up to the minimum would be another, allowing a player to trade some really bad rolls for the class minimums.

One of the things I preferred in later editions of D&D was broadening out stat bonuses, the AD&D only 15 or higher made any difference in some stats and the STR bonuses in particular created a situation where a fraction of 1% could roll up a tremendously powerful fighter (18 51%+ STR) while the other 99.97% were essentially just the same average fighter. By starting some bonuses at 13 it made stats matter while also making very high stats matter less.

Broadening stat bonuses is not only important in random chargen as in point buy you will see everybody with the same break point stats unless they are well disbursed.
 
Hmm, some thoughts for fixing untenable attribute rolls.

First, if the average of your rolls is below some threshold (average or maybe a bit more), you could re-roll the entire set, or take the difference in points to add to attributes.

Second, if you don't like some of your low rolls, you can swap points from any attribute above some threshold to any attribute below some threshold. I.e. you can move your character closer to the middle, you can't dock a dump stat to boost already high rolls.

I don't know if that really would work though...

I like random rolls to give a chance of getting really good rolls. Arrays may not include the highest possible value and arrays or point buy force tradeoffs. There's always the chance with random rolls of a really really good set. Of course that raises the issue of making an "unbalanced" character. The question becomes how unbalanced is it really?
 
Exactly! If we can’t abide substandard characters why have a system that allows them?

You can abide them--when they're that way by your choice. I really think if you don't understand the difference between that and being stuck with them via die roll, its going to be hard to continue this discussion.
 
OK, beyond balance what are the other issues? You've mentioned a desire to be able to choose character type. That's an area RQ provides reasonable choice in and I can also offer tweaks to make you choice more viable. I've even worked up new previous experience paths to give a player the option they sought (and some just because they made sense to increase the options).

Core RQ really didn't. I don't mean just being able to choose your character type, I mean being able to chose your character (within a range). If I have a concept for a character who is very strong and has these particular skills, that's what I want to do, not some approximation of same. And note my comment about mitigation was not having that word emphasized for no reason either.
 
That's something we need to change. Maybe GMs need to signal better the flexibility they are willing to offer, but players also need to stop bringing baggage from previous games.

Good luck with that. People carry baggage from everything they do in life, games aren't going to be any different.

Sure, valid point here, and sometimes it may take a while to add up your observations. Some thoughts:

If there are multiple PCs that fill a role (fighter is a great example), either they are mechanically identical, or someone is going to end up being at least marginally better (maybe my weapon choice while being totally point balanced from a purer mechanical standpoint ends up being better because of the mix of opposition the GM presents).

I think there's a difference between "marginally" and what I'm talking about. That doesn't mean you'd not assign that term to what I am, but again, this is going to be in the eye of the beholder.

Ideally the game provides secondary capabilities or other ways a player may distinguish themselves from the pack such that being the 2nd best fighter is OK because you have some other specialty also. Then the problem is mostly reduced to if there are huge gaps in capability (which sure, those can arise from random attribute rolls). So if we have random generation, the GM can offer some flexibility. We can also put more focus on the secondary roles so maybe you really are several notches down on fighting (but can still hold yourself in a fight), BUT there's some other role you actually are really good at.

Well, there are a bunch of issues here. First of all, this requires the GM to be paying attention to this, and actually offering enough value in other areas that it feels like a fair trade-off. And of course that someone else isn't already as good or better as you in those areas. Often the best you can do in a game is to have two characters who are both reasonably close to as good, and even that turns heavily on the resolution method (a +1 in a D20 or a +5% om a percentage system is going to feel less of an edge/loss than an extra die in some die pool systems, or a plus in a 3D6 resolution system, and that marches up fast, because its easy to lose any sense of the difference in a big linear die system, where it can end up being far more notable in the others).

We have to recognize that characters with multiple roles may not be the best in any of them. Now yes, this WAS a problem I observed in Cold Iron. In one campaign, I had a pure fighter. My pure fighter was worse than the all the other starting PCs, the rest of which could also cast spells. Solution for my game? I start my characters at higher than 1st level for one thing.

That certainly helps with any game that is really fixated on zero-to-hero, which can make even little differences stand out. It only does so much for things that land outside the direct skill roll mods (which are usually only visible in combat, but I've seen games where ongoing skill roll accumulation is based on an attribute, which produces much of the same effect as having that extra damage die in RQ).

So a starting fighter/caster will have a lower fighting level than a pure fighter. I also changed the fighting skills so a caster gets fewer points per fighter level to spend on fighting skills. NOW a caster has to have massively better attributes to be a better fighter. Now with re-rolls to get there, the fighter/caster has to roll awesome attributes across the board. Re-rolls or even just attribute swapping easily makes sure the pure fighter character has at least a good fighter.

Now might a player still find their PC significantly less relevant to the campaign? Sure. But it's more likely to come from player engagement and initiative than mechanical character differences. Die rolling luck in play can also factor. A string of good rolls can make a mediocre fighter the best fighter in a given battle.

Or, honestly, because there's been a communication breakdown about what sort of an approach is going to be useful in the campaign. That can happen with any character gen system, of course, but its liable to make forced-discrepancies in character capability be even worse. But if someone has tried to develop skills to support his Charisma, those skills better be things that come up fairly often and are fairly useful.
 
Yes, that's a valid point. INT in RQ can make quite a difference, though with 2d6+6 INT, you can only get a penalty from low INT by rolling snake eyes (and if you do 3d6k2+6 you now only have a 1 in 216 chance of winding up with an 8 INT). So now mostly we're talking about a +0, +5%, or +10% to skills. Significant, but not totally a loss. And having a better DEX may make up for lower INT for a good portion of skills. But having some previous experience that increases skill enough that even a +10% is not so significant would do a lot to mitigate that.

Though I'll point out that with at least some versions of RQ, Int was also the gift that kept on giving, since it also effected your advancement. So getting a low value meant you not only started out worse, it meant the people that started out better were going to slowly improve even further because of the times that bonus made the difference.

And while it might not be easy to roll that 8, that's little consolation to someone who does.

And again, re-rolls of some kind or tweaking things can smooth out even those rough patches. I think the key here is to make sure that choice of role can actually matter more than the attributes rolled, and to have enough choice of role that other than for fighters (which tend to be needed in multiples and have less opportunity for distinction) that a player can find a niche for their character.

Its not even a given that multiple fighters are intrinsically less able to show distinction, though RQ didn't have a lot of tools to do that (if anything, it tended to make those who were paying attention more and more alike because the good choices were not exactly concealed once you understood the mechanics--back in the day, the migration toward bastard swords for anyone who could use them one handed was pretty visible). Its not uncommon for games to have talents or the like that can make different operating procedures viable (its also not uncommon to fuck this up, as D&D3e is the poster child for, but its not a given that's what will happen).

But you're quite correct that there's some benefit to being able to, well, do something else. The big issue is that, similar or not, fighters all participate in the same scenes and share screen time, whereas any other specialty is often doing its own thing. It also usually has far less engagement (in terms of the time taken with it, the number of die rolls, and some of the decision making). Making a good sage can be useful, but it still adds up to "Sometimes you get to make a die roll to provide a useful piece of information." Its not a compelling play-cycle for most people. An intrusion specialist can be more so, but then you start to run into the cyberpunk hacker problem.


Of course what that is pointing out is that getting to build significant parts of your character is important, so the question is more no randomization at all, or some (how much)?

And still turns on "Do you get value out of this randomization?" And perhaps more importantly, "Does everyone in the game get value out of it?" This is one reason I claim that at least part of this turns on how mandatory randomization (or, far as that goes, its opposite) is. I do still think that at least as far as attribute generation goes, its more common for games designed to be random to make it hard to impose distribution alternatives than the inverse. You can't easily make the whole system random generation, but then, once you get away from really simple systems, purely random gen away from attributes is almost nonexistent.

Now when encouraging folks to use the online character generator for Classic Traveller, without setting some options, a player will get a totally random character. But the ease of roll up several and pick one brings a choice back in. I'm also happy to allow certain options to "pick" a few aspects of the character.

Even with choices you could run into the issue with OT character gen that the skills you ended up with were just not all that useful a lot of the time. That was the consequence of the fact you weren't choosing a skill, but a table to roll on. Some tables were more useful than others, but you could still have situations where, say, someone who was a three tour Marine who managed to come out having focused on the Service Skills and first Advanced Education table coming out really good with Vacc Suit, Blade Combat and Tactics and trying to figure out what to do with that. Obviously discarding characters gets rid of at least the really obnoxious outliers of that nature, but it can only do so much about the one-term wonders and the like.
 
I'm not sure what in my comment you are actually replying to? I mean, incidentally, I think disagree with statement about game attributes, but it really hinges on what we mean by "actually matter".

Where attributes actually weigh in enough to make the difference noticeable in play. (My more general comment was that combat wasn't necessarily the only place you care about these things, its just the place where the differences can be most stark because it often has more mechanical process than others which often add up to "make a skill roll either against this target number or with this modifier").

OD&D is the poster child for one that, at least pre-Greyhawk, they didn't really matter in many cases. Much of the range of a given attribute produced the same output.

At the other end you have something like Interlock (the game system used in the original version of Cyberpunk and Mekton); skill value totals were the sum of a skill and an attribute, with the attributes ranging from 2-10 and the skills usually running about +1 to +5. You were going to very much notice the difference in play with an attribute that common contributed to things you were doing at 4 and one at 8.

My RQ example earlier was another. Most die pool systems are yet a third.
 
Just add a default points spread option. If you don't like the rolls. take the template. It's easy, although perhaps not satisfying.

Its at least far superior to "just take what the dice threw you."
 
Its at least far superior to "just take what the dice threw you."
I’ll exit this one by just saying you seem to be the Jedi here talking in absolutes and not able to understand that while it may be “far superior” to you it is not to many players that enjoy the challenge of playing randomly generated characters. The fact you don’t like it is valid but it doesn’t make it bad/wrong for other people as you are painting in this thread.
 
I entirely agree, but the hobby is full of people who've learned, sometimes honestly, that all expressing dissatisfaction does is get them attitude back, so I'm never going to assume they'll do it.
This is true.
I'm more likely to quit a group than try to express what I'm unhappy with. Not rage quit, just offer my excuses and leave.
The times I have tried to express my issues have not gone well... but it's usually down to my wanting something different than what the rest of the group wants anyway, so best I go elsewhere.
 
I think it's useful to distinguish between using a randomiser to create an interesting character that you might not have considered playing and using a randomiser to create a character that's basically like any other just somewhat better or worse to a random degree.

Random character creation in D&D in particular is often defended on the grounds of the former, but in reality I find it mostly does the latter (Especially if you assign the random rolls to your choice of attributes rather than going down the line). In a game like Reign you can do entirely the former without needing to include the latter at all.
 
I think it's useful to distinguish between using a randomiser to create an interesting character that you might not have considered playing and using a randomiser to create a character that's basically like any other just somewhat better or worse to a random degree.

Random character creation in D&D in particular is often defended on the grounds of the former, but in reality I find it mostly does the latter (Especially if you assign the random rolls to your choice of attributes rather than going down the line). In a game like Reign you can do entirely the former without needing to include the latter at all.
I will defend the latter in context. En Garde! would not work without a) random generation and b) massive character imbalance. You need the sons of dukes and the sons of peasants rubbing shoulders in Paris. A point buy system would just lead to everybody being the second son of a gentleman with average military ability and nobody wants that.

Of course, the trick here is that En Garde! has been around long enough that everyone knows what they're getting into and fully welcomes the fact they may be mechanically suboptimal.
 
Where attributes actually weigh in enough to make the difference noticeable in play. (My more general comment was that combat wasn't necessarily the only place you care about these things, its just the place where the differences can be most stark because it often has more mechanical process than others which often add up to "make a skill roll either against this target number or with this modifier").

OD&D is the poster child for one that, at least pre-Greyhawk, they didn't really matter in many cases. Much of the range of a given attribute produced the same output.

At the other end you have something like Interlock (the game system used in the original version of Cyberpunk and Mekton); skill value totals were the sum of a skill and an attribute, with the attributes ranging from 2-10 and the skills usually running about +1 to +5. You were going to very much notice the difference in play with an attribute that common contributed to things you were doing at 4 and one at 8.

My RQ example earlier was another. Most die pool systems are yet a third.
OK. The comment you replied to had me acknowledge a poster's point of view for some games, but was about me proposing that there exists a playstyle where it is difficult to even make sense of the idea that random chargen could result in you having a "completely useless character" and gave an example using Boot Hill 2e in campaign mode. Gameplay is almost entirely mechanic-free role play with a referee, but with some detailed rules around gunfights. You could run a whole campaign and have a hotshot with great stats die in their first gunfight. A whole campaign might not have more than a handful of gunfights, with some characters never even being in one.

If that is too exotic, we have people who play the much more mechanically engaged Ars Magica, and I've never seen people disappointed to play Grogs, despite their suboptimal mechanical situation vs. Companions or Mages. Often, these Grogs aren't designed or built by the player using them. The joy is in inhabiting the character, seeing how events unfold. Likewise, I've seen a lot of Call of Cthulhu with pre-gens and a lack of disappointment over various pathetic failures and horrors. Or... Paranoia, or Toon, or Ghostbusters.

Like, I totally get how it can be enjoyable to mechanically engage with an RPG and have your character achieve success, and wanting to play an RPG where you can build your character such that they can mechanically engage with the systems and maximize their chance of success in whatever endeavor the player cares about, competence. On the other hand, there is a playstyle that is really role-play-y and the conflicts are role-play-y and not necessarily resolved by engaging the mechanics and rolling well.

All I'm really trying to say is that the playstyle exists, and the fact that it exists means that statements like: "The problem with random character generation is that you may end up with a completely useless character. There has to be some mechanism to get that character to basic competence in at least the core skill that they are supposed to have." are not true to those playing in the style I am describing.

P.S. This is a fun Boot Hill blog post that goes on a bit in this vein: https://www.chocolatehammer.org/?p=5773
 
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Just add a default points spread option. If you don't like the rolls. take the template. It's easy, although perhaps not satisfying.
I personally like both and to have the option. I like random primarily for the challenge to play what I get, when I want to play something specific point buy is my preference.

So I prefer a choice in a game between point buy and random, where essentially point buy is the average or a bit better than random.

Yet to be fair to other players, if someone chooses random I would require them to stick to it otherwise it is point buy with extra points. That is they get two bites at the apple and are "cheating" in they want all the benefits that random can give (like really much better scores) without the risk.

For my own home system can pretty much tell you how many extra points it effectively is to allow that second bite at the ample. It's not small. (My point buy option is slightly better than random).
 
OK. The comment you replied to had me acknowledge a poster's point of view for some games, but was about me proposing that there exists a playstyle where it is difficult to even make sense of the idea that random chargen could result in you having a "completely useless character" and gave an example using Boot Hill 2e in campaign mode. Gameplay is almost entirely mechanic-free role play with a referee, but with some detailed rules around gunfights. You could run a whole campaign and have a hotshot with great stats die in their first gunfight. A whole campaign might not have more than a handful of gunfights, with some characters never even being in one.

Which is an example of the attributes not mattering for a large part of the gameplay, no?

If that is too exotic, we have people who play the much more mechanically engaged Ars Magica, and I've never seen people disappointed to play Grogs, despite their suboptimal mechanical situation vs. Companions or Mages. Often, these Grogs aren't designed or built by the player using them. The joy is in inhabiting the character, seeing how events unfold. Likewise, I've seen a lot of Call of Cthulhu with pre-gens and a lack of disappointment over various pathetic failures and horrors. Or... Paranoia, or Toon, or Ghostbusters.

I've actually seen people who kind of object to grogs in principal, but among those that didn't, they didn't because they didn't consider them "real" PCs; they were effectively NPCs a player sometimes operated (the fact they're treated as a group possession reinforced this).

Past that--I don't think I ever said every single person felt this way--if that was true we wouldn't even be having this discussion. I'll say an awful lot of people do, however, and I suspect (but cannot prove) that the majority do, though. To make it extremely clear, and its an easy thing to go off in the rails in these kinds of discussions, that's not a moral judgment.

(Though CoC is kind of cheating. Its like talking about Dungeon Crawl Classics and noting people are not bothered by losing characters. People going into those are kind of expecting things to go badly. Paranoia too, far as that goes).


Like, I totally get how it can be enjoyable to mechanically engage with an RPG and have your character achieve success, and wanting to play an RPG where you can build your character such that they can mechanically engage with the systems and maximize their chance of success in whatever endeavor the player cares about, competence. On the other hand, there is a playstyle that is really role-play-y and the conflicts are role-play-y and not necessarily resolved by engaging the mechanics and rolling well.

I think this is slightly misrepresenting my point, though I doubt you're doing it deliberately.

Yes, there's the fundamental "I'm playing a game and want things to go well" but this goes well beyond that. Much of the hobby is people wanting to play some analog to a fictional hero. Most of those are defined, at least in part, about what they're good at. If they have the sense they're not good at anything (and that's going to be relative to what's going on around them to at least some degree) its not going to feel like a good experience, but it isn't about "winning" per se.

All I'm really trying to say is that the playstyle exists, and the fact that it exists means that statements like: "The problem with random character generation is that you may end up with a completely useless character. There has to be some mechanism to get that character to basic competence in at least the core skill that they are supposed to have." are not true to those playing in the style I am describing.

Well, I'll note that statement didn't come out of me, but I also think its true more often than not; most games are not DCC, CoC or Paranoia.
 
I’ll exit this one by just saying you seem to be the Jedi here talking in absolutes and not able to understand that while it may be “far superior” to you it is not to many players that enjoy the challenge of playing randomly generated characters. The fact you don’t like it is valid but it doesn’t make it bad/wrong for other people as you are painting in this thread.

I don't recall where I ever said it was bad for people who enjoy that. If it seems like I did I expressed myself poorly somewhere.
 
This is true.
I'm more likely to quit a group than try to express what I'm unhappy with. Not rage quit, just offer my excuses and leave.
The times I have tried to express my issues have not gone well... but it's usually down to my wanting something different than what the rest of the group wants anyway, so best I go elsewhere.

And that's where this sort of thing tends to come from (though its also true that one can over-learn that lesson (in other words, assume that there's no flexibility in a group when in fact there is) but I'm not going to criticize someone for not wanting to touch the stove again to find out if its hot.
 
I don't recall where I ever said it was bad for people who enjoy that. If it seems like I did I expressed myself poorly somewhere.
You are very adamant and forceful in stating your case. That can make people feel like the "in my opinion" part is not just personal preference, but an objective statement.

What I get is that you are very passionate about build as opposed to random. That's cool.

I feel like we're all starting to talk in circles around each other, though some interesting ideas have been raised such as everyone rolling a set of attributes and using those as a set of arrays you can pick from. I think I've also toyed with the idea presented of starting with average stats and then rolling a bucket of d6 (or dN where you have N attributes) and adding a point to each attribute corresponding to a die roll.

Another idea I had was to pair attributes and then you roll for one half the attributes, the other half are MAX+MIN-roll so each pair adds up to MAX+MIN. The problem is then you can't have, for example, a strong AND smart character. You would have to design the attribute set around that aspect.
 
Core RQ really didn't. I don't mean just being able to choose your character type, I mean being able to chose your character (within a range). If I have a concept for a character who is very strong and has these particular skills, that's what I want to do, not some approximation of same. And note my comment about mitigation was not having that word emphasized for no reason either.
If someone came to my RQ campaign and said that what they really wanted to play, or perhaps after playing one character and retiring it or having it die, they wanted to try a very contrasting character, I would consider how to accommodate them. I might allow them maximum STR, but tell them to pick another attribute that MUST be below average. Or I might have them roll an array, and if they didn't get a really good roll, fudge things around. The specific skills aspect is pretty easy to handle as long as what they want is within reason for a starting character (at the time of rolling - allowing that at some point in the campaign, I may give starting characters somewhat of a boost beyond the previous experience system). See, you talk to me about what you want and if I value your participation, I do my best to make it happen. I'd do that for a build system too, helping you attain your goal if you are having trouble understanding the system well enough to execute your concept well. On the other hand, if we already have a character that looks pretty much like your concept, I'm going to ask you to differentiate in some way. That may be as simple as picking a different cult.
 
Good luck with that. People carry baggage from everything they do in life, games aren't going to be any different.
Sure. I can dream though...

I think there's a difference between "marginally" and what I'm talking about. That doesn't mean you'd not assign that term to what I am, but again, this is going to be in the eye of the beholder
Sure, and I agree, a character that is a major step less effective is an issue.

Well, there are a bunch of issues here. First of all, this requires the GM to be paying attention to this, and actually offering enough value in other areas that it feels like a fair trade-off. And of course that someone else isn't already as good or better as you in those areas. Often the best you can do in a game is to have two characters who are both reasonably close to as good, and even that turns heavily on the resolution method (a +1 in a D20 or a +5% om a percentage system is going to feel less of an edge/loss than an extra die in some die pool systems, or a plus in a 3D6 resolution system, and that marches up fast, because its easy to lose any sense of the difference in a big linear die system, where it can end up being far more notable in the others).
Sure, but I would suggest that the farther from "marginal" the differences are between two characters, the more obvious it's going to be to all. And yes, the GM has to provide different challenges, or the players have to seek them out. In a sandbox a good player will seek ways to utilize their strengths. And in that case, ultimately the most powerful character belongs to the player who is most able to leverage their character's strengths.

That certainly helps with any game that is really fixated on zero-to-hero, which can make even little differences stand out. It only does so much for things that land outside the direct skill roll mods (which are usually only visible in combat, but I've seen games where ongoing skill roll accumulation is based on an attribute, which produces much of the same effect as having that extra damage die in RQ).
Yea, if high attributes accelerate the growth, that can be a problem. Mostly that isn't too much of a problem in RQ, though I DO give the ability bonus as a bonus on experience rolls, so yes, I've increased that factor above the "you always have at least INTx1% chance of increasing your skill by experience." But it also reduces the impact of INT since other attributes can help also. But note that in RQ, if your skill is lower, you generally have a higher chance of improvement and it's cheaper to train the skill.

Or, honestly, because there's been a communication breakdown about what sort of an approach is going to be useful in the campaign. That can happen with any character gen system, of course, but its liable to make forced-discrepancies in character capability be even worse. But if someone has tried to develop skills to support his Charisma, those skills better be things that come up fairly often and are fairly useful.
Communication breakdown of course is one of the types of "people problems" I've been harping on...

Yea, if someone is developing skills, they need to be made important. That isn't always the GM's responsibility though, especially in a sandbox.
 
You are very adamant and forceful in stating your case. That can make people feel like the "in my opinion" part is not just personal preference, but an objective statement.

What I get is that you are very passionate about build as opposed to random. That's cool.

And I am--in my case. I don't claim this applies to everyone. I do think that when assessing other people some people are flippant about the dislike for random, but that's not a criticism of them liking it themselves.

I feel like we're all starting to talk in circles around each other, though some interesting ideas have been raised such as everyone rolling a set of attributes and using those as a set of arrays you can pick from. I think I've also toyed with the idea presented of starting with average stats and then rolling a bucket of d6 (or dN where you have N attributes) and adding a point to each attribute corresponding to a die roll.

The really baroque semi-choice generation I used for my Mythras game (because I really didn't want everyone hammering those break points, but wanted to give as much control to people as I could while avoiding that) worked something like this.

Another idea I had was to pair attributes and then you roll for one half the attributes, the other half are MAX+MIN-roll so each pair adds up to MAX+MIN. The problem is then you can't have, for example, a strong AND smart character. You would have to design the attribute set around that aspect.

Can you elaborate on this a bit more? I'm not quite getting how this works.
 
If someone came to my RQ campaign and said that what they really wanted to play, or perhaps after playing one character and retiring it or having it die, they wanted to try a very contrasting character, I would consider how to accommodate them. I might allow them maximum STR, but tell them to pick another attribute that MUST be below average. Or I might have them roll an array, and if they didn't get a really good roll, fudge things around. The specific skills aspect is pretty easy to handle as long as what they want is within reason for a starting character (at the time of rolling - allowing that at some point in the campaign, I may give starting characters somewhat of a boost beyond the previous experience system). See, you talk to me about what you want and if I value your participation, I do my best to make it happen. I'd do that for a build system too, helping you attain your goal if you are having trouble understanding the system well enough to execute your concept well. On the other hand, if we already have a character that looks pretty much like your concept, I'm going to ask you to differentiate in some way. That may be as simple as picking a different cult.

But note at this point you're effectively not really using the character generation system any more; you're doing sort of an ad-hoc address with, at best, the character generation system informing it. As you note, you can do that sort of thing (if its okay with you; I've never played with a group I don't think it'd have caused trouble with) with pretty much any character generation system no matter how it theoretically works.
 
Sure. I can dream though...

I get it. I sometimes really think games would go a lot more smoothly if people would genuinely express what they want. I just don't expect it ever to happen...

Sure, and I agree, a character that is a major step less effective is an issue.


Sure, but I would suggest that the farther from "marginal" the differences are between two characters, the more obvious it's going to be to all. And yes, the GM has to provide different challenges, or the players have to seek them out. In a sandbox a good player will seek ways to utilize their strengths. And in that case, ultimately the most powerful character belongs to the player who is most able to leverage their character's strengths.

I don't entirely disagree with the latter, but I don't think its always as easy to do that in every campaign as I think you do here. Even when you can get strong value in them when they come up if you're clever, sometimes how frequently you can do that is just limited.

Yea, if high attributes accelerate the growth, that can be a problem. Mostly that isn't too much of a problem in RQ, though I DO give the ability bonus as a bonus on experience rolls, so yes, I've increased that factor above the "you always have at least INTx1% chance of increasing your skill by experience." But it also reduces the impact of INT since other attributes can help also. But note that in RQ, if your skill is lower, you generally have a higher chance of improvement and it's cheaper to train the skill.

As I recall, the INT value used to directly add to your chance of advancement there in at least one version (I think by 3e that had changed over to the skill bonus adding). And while the latter is true, the maths still add up to the higher INT advancing more often, and that's actually proportionately more true as the skills advance (an extra 5% chance of advancement can have a modest visible impact when you're rolling 60% to advance anyway, but its a lot more important when you're rolling 15%).

Communication breakdown of course is one of the types of "people problems" I've been harping on...

Yeah, but it plays right into how much you can work around these problems. Not all skill types and the associated attributes are equally important in all campaigns.

Yea, if someone is developing skills, they need to be made important. That isn't always the GM's responsibility though, especially in a sandbox.

Absolutely true--and to be honest, I'm not a fan of having to fix problems at that back end that way--but sometimes they just aren't going to be important as I said. If you're running an almost entirely city based campaign (and this can even happen with a sandbox depending on the setting), there's only so much you're going to get out of Survival and other nature-oriented skills; at the other end if the campaign is about surviving and exploring a sparsely populated wilderness, getting value out of social skills is going to be a stretch.
 
I think there's a difference between "marginally" and what I'm talking about. That doesn't mean you'd not assign that term to what I am, but again, this is going to be in the eye of the beholder.

An issue I've run into with point buy is where you start having players "top" each other in an arms race for strongest, quickest, best xyz. Went through a period with HERO where the PCs were becoming very ineffective one trick ponies putting massive amounts into one area as the players vie for top spot. That eventually sort of fixed itself with that group as the parties were simply not functional, but it tends to happen when a new group gets together or a new genre is explored. Sometimes it self corrects, sometimes everything goes down in flames.

The other side of that is you tend to see a lot of generalists making the PCs all kind of the same. In fact it can take quite a bit of system knowledge to make a capable PC who is effective, and not a bland cookie cutter template.

Neither of these are usually long term game killers (hopefully players learn), but it can be a major turn off and does provide some appreciation for random systems letting the dice decide who is the strongest, fastest etc.

This is my experience as somebody to generally prefers point buy.
 
Lately when I play Everway, I randomly roll to determine which Vision Cards I will use to determine my character's concept and backstory. (The cards in the Silver Anniversary Edition are organized in 17 thematic groups of 6, so I just roll 1d20 to determine the group (rerolling 18-20) and then 1d6 to figure out which image in that group. I made this switch because I tend to return to certain images over and over again.
 
Though I'll point out that with at least some versions of RQ, Int was also the gift that kept on giving, since it also effected your advancement. So getting a low value meant you not only started out worse, it meant the people that started out better were going to slowly improve even further because of the times that bonus made the difference.

And while it might not be easy to roll that 8, that's little consolation to someone who does.
Sure, that ongoing value of a higher INT may make a difference, though it doesn't come much into play until you have pretty high skills. Ans yes, rolling an 8 INT would be bad. Really if someone managed to roll an 8 INT, I'd just have them re-roll these days. Optionally I could make INT 2d6+7 (a 19 INT really is just 1 point better than an 18). I think I'll just tell anyone who rolls an 8 to re-roll...

Its not even a given that multiple fighters are intrinsically less able to show distinction, though RQ didn't have a lot of tools to do that (if anything, it tended to make those who were paying attention more and more alike because the good choices were not exactly concealed once you understood the mechanics--back in the day, the migration toward bastard swords for anyone who could use them one handed was pretty visible). Its not uncommon for games to have talents or the like that can make different operating procedures viable (its also not uncommon to fuck this up, as D&D3e is the poster child for, but its not a given that's what will happen).
Making different weapons viable is very tricky. Some systems make all weapons equal, but then there's no actual differentiation. In RQ1, a bastard sword does 1d10 vs broadsword at 1d8+1 so not much incentive to change to something with a low base skill. In my game, spears are very useful which at least makes one alternate weapon. We also have an axe fighter who is doing pretty well.

But you're quite correct that there's some benefit to being able to, well, do something else. The big issue is that, similar or not, fighters all participate in the same scenes and share screen time, whereas any other specialty is often doing its own thing. It also usually has far less engagement (in terms of the time taken with it, the number of die rolls, and some of the decision making). Making a good sage can be useful, but it still adds up to "Sometimes you get to make a die roll to provide a useful piece of information." Its not a compelling play-cycle for most people. An intrusion specialist can be more so, but then you start to run into the cyberpunk hacker problem.
Well, if non-combat stuff isn't meaningful in the campaign, then yes, everyone has to have a good combat role.

And still turns on "Do you get value out of this randomization?" And perhaps more importantly, "Does everyone in the game get value out of it?" This is one reason I claim that at least part of this turns on how mandatory randomization (or, far as that goes, its opposite) is. I do still think that at least as far as attribute generation goes, its more common for games designed to be random to make it hard to impose distribution alternatives than the inverse. You can't easily make the whole system random generation, but then, once you get away from really simple systems, purely random gen away from attributes is almost nonexistent.
I get you are hard pressed to see value in randomization, and that's fine. To me it definitely adds value.

Even with choices you could run into the issue with OT character gen that the skills you ended up with were just not all that useful a lot of the time. That was the consequence of the fact you weren't choosing a skill, but a table to roll on. Some tables were more useful than others, but you could still have situations where, say, someone who was a three tour Marine who managed to come out having focused on the Service Skills and first Advanced Education table coming out really good with Vacc Suit, Blade Combat and Tactics and trying to figure out what to do with that. Obviously discarding characters gets rid of at least the really obnoxious outliers of that nature, but it can only do so much about the one-term wonders and the like.
With the original books, the skill list is so short, it shouldn't take too much to make almost any skill useful. It also helps if the skills are not treated such that not having a skill makes it hard to do anything. That marine with Vacc Suit has an important skill that most characters won't have. In my game, Vacc Suit is also useful for avoiding penalties in zero-G. Tactics has direct input to the encounter and combat system. I've played Army one-term wonders with 6 skills which is pretty cool and leaves potential benefit from being so young.
 
I personally like both and to have the option. I like random primarily for the challenge to play what I get, when I want to play something specific point buy is my preference.

So I prefer a choice in a game between point buy and random, where essentially point buy is the average or a bit better than random.

Yet to be fair to other players, if someone chooses random I would require them to stick to it otherwise it is point buy with extra points. That is they get two bites at the apple and are "cheating" in they want all the benefits that random can give (like really much better scores) without the risk.

For my own home system can pretty much tell you how many extra points it effectively is to allow that second bite at the ample. It's not small. (My point buy option is slightly better than random).
Why would you want point buy to be better than random average? That means that random is a bet against a stacked house.

Taking D&D as an example, I would make point buy be about the average of 3d6 while random is 4d6k3. Then the gamble is likely a win, but you have to play what you get. Another option with the D&D 3.x attribute costs (where going from a 17 to an 18 costs more points than going from 15 to 16) IS point buy is a bit above average, but random may well get you a better character because any high rolls are worth more points.
 
Can you elaborate on this a bit more? I'm not quite getting how this works.
So I didn't get very far, but let's say you pair STR/INT, DEX/WIS, CON/CHA (I really don't think the standard D&D attributes work well with this idea). You then roll 3d6 for each of STR, DEX, and CON. Then INT = 21 - STR, WIS = 21 - DEX, CHA = 21 - CON. So if you rolled 12 STR, 16 DEX, and 8 CON, you would get 9 INT, 5 WIS, and 13 CHA. The trick is first you need attributes that can be truly opposed and second, you need to make it just as meaningful to have 10 STR, 11 INT as 3 STR, 18 INT as 18 STR, 3 INT.
 
But note at this point you're effectively not really using the character generation system any more; you're doing sort of an ad-hoc address with, at best, the character generation system informing it. As you note, you can do that sort of thing (if its okay with you; I've never played with a group I don't think it'd have caused trouble with) with pretty much any character generation system no matter how it theoretically works.
Well, I haven't had anyone come in with such a strong concept that we weren't able to start with random generation. And really I've only had to make minor tweaks beyond re-rolling if the first set of attributes is particularly bad. So characters in my campaigns are mostly random so far as the system is random to start with.
 
I get it. I sometimes really think games would go a lot more smoothly if people would genuinely express what they want. I just don't expect it ever to happen...

I don't entirely disagree with the latter, but I don't think its always as easy to do that in every campaign as I think you do here. Even when you can get strong value in them when they come up if you're clever, sometimes how frequently you can do that is just limited.
I can of course only speak from my experience where most people seem able to engage with the character they wind up with. I've made some minor adjustments at chargen time, and certainly suggested someone re-roll a few times (more often in my OD&D play by post).

As I recall, the INT value used to directly add to your chance of advancement there in at least one version (I think by 3e that had changed over to the skill bonus adding). And while the latter is true, the maths still add up to the higher INT advancing more often, and that's actually proportionately more true as the skills advance (an extra 5% chance of advancement can have a modest visible impact when you're rolling 60% to advance anyway, but its a lot more important when you're rolling 15%).
Ah, yes, I see in RQ1 your chance of improvement is increased 3% for every point of INT over 12. Somehow I don't use that an instead, INT is your minimum chance of improvement. But I do allow you to add your ability bonus (where an 18 INT nets you +10%, less than the +18% from RAW...). Yea, that rule as written is a serious double dip.

Yeah, but it plays right into how much you can work around these problems. Not all skill types and the associated attributes are equally important in all campaigns.
Yea, but that impacts build as well as random. And at least in RQ, skills are mostly player choice.

Absolutely true--and to be honest, I'm not a fan of having to fix problems at that back end that way--but sometimes they just aren't going to be important as I said. If you're running an almost entirely city based campaign (and this can even happen with a sandbox depending on the setting), there's only so much you're going to get out of Survival and other nature-oriented skills; at the other end if the campaign is about surviving and exploring a sparsely populated wilderness, getting value out of social skills is going to be a stretch.
Sure, those are problems. One cool thing about RQ is you get a lot of skill development in play, which of course is guided by what you actually do (experience) but preparation (training) also plays a major role.

Traveller certainly is more likely to cause problems with useful skills, and I agree that there is an issue there. I've played ground pounders in a more space oriented campaign and that can be a bummer (most everyone has a chance of getting gun combat at least, and failing that you can try the self improvement system to get some gun combat). But that's where the roll 2 or 3 characters and pick one would help a lot (and if you manage to roll 3 army types, well, roll another one or two...). In other words, my thought for injecting more player choice in Traveller is to just generate a stable of characters. Or use the online generator and use the options to instruct it to make your choice of Scout, Merchant, or Navy if you want a ship skilled character.

I guess in the end, I agree with you, some level of player direction to the type of character they get is important. But I like that to be tempered with some randomness. With any random based system, you can always temper the randomness with player direction simply by generating several characters and picking one. As others have said, it can be hard to inject randomness into a build system (though I have randomized which attributes get which values from an array).
 
And that's where this sort of thing tends to come from (though its also true that one can over-learn that lesson (in other words, assume that there's no flexibility in a group when in fact there is) but I'm not going to criticize someone for not wanting to touch the stove again to find out if its hot.
It's not so much that I judged them to be inflexible... I just came to recognize our differences of tastes and interests were pretty wide. But I also learned not to join groups if I can discern those sort of differences exist.
Right now there's a group I'm in that I want to quit... and I probably won't bother to explain it to them either. It's not them, it's me.
 
There was a time when I'd have answered "non-random". Now I'm much less sure about it:grin:!
These days, I can appreciate random, and I can appreciate non-random, both for what they are doing and no longer for what I want them to be doing...

...because today, I just want a character to play. I've played so many kinds of characters, that for most games, I no longer want to play anything specific! I just want a character I find interesting. As long as I don't have to play a wizard, or any other kind of one-trick pony, I'm fine.
But I find simpler concepts more interesting these days, so I'm actually easy to please. In fact, I'm trying to see how simple I can make them before they move into something that's no longer fun to play.

But, random or non-random? Well, my favourite kind of character generation is "lifepath", which is usually random, but guided and with multiple steps. So, much as it is a cop-out, my honest answer would have to be "a mix":thumbsup:.
But, on the other pole, I can also appreciate Feng Shui 2e's Archetypes, where I can just print out a page (or two pages, if I want the advancement as well) from the book, and I have a character!
See, it gives me a character to play in a record short time. And I like the characters, so I'm fine:shade:!
Sure, I can sometimes grumble that I don't get to play a magic spy, or a martial arts ghost. But then many other systems have concepts that are hard to make, so what does it matter:angel:?

*One-trick ponies are no fun, regardless of whether their "schtick" is "magic" or "I hit him with my axe". But many systems give so many perks to wizards that they cut them off from everything else to try and achieve some balance...with Ars Magica being a prime example, where wizards are nearly all-powerful, but have trouble even interacting with the mundanes. Sometimes I want to play a Cyrano-type of character who has befriended a wizard and is trying to help him woo his beloved...and then I realize that I'd need someone else to play the wizard, and I give up:tongue:!
 
Reading over this whole thread, there are some really interesting points raised all over the place.

I've been gaming for decades, but in the last 25 years the main feedback I've had whenever the subject of randomly rolled vs designed characters comes up is that players often feel that a randomly generated character doesn't feel like it belongs to them and they feel far less invested. To me at least, it seems clear that the players I've encountered absolutely prefer to build rather than randomise, although obviously the plural of anecdote is not evidence.

There's also the factor of increasing competition for people's time. Compared to when I was a teenager or a student, I and all my peers have far more money and far less free time. We used to play basically anything because it was a cheap activity. That's no longer true, there are literally hundreds of other things we can do with out limited free time. The idea that you need to grind a "bad" character who isn't fun to play for several sessions to somehow earn the right to play the character you want to play once they level up to the point where they worked for you? Nah, there's other shit for people to do which doesn't involve the hassle of dealing with the logistics coordinating the schedule of several other people's free time.

If you've talking about creating a character for what's expected to be a long term game over multiple sessions, given the choice of creating them by taking their own decisions vs trusing some dice, with all these other activities competing for people's time you can see why player created appeals over randomly created.

I've also heard a lot of feedback around groups allowing character tweaks or full re-builds after a couple of sessions if players feel the character could be more fun if built differently after that initial "shakedown" period. That's drifting off-topic, but also something way easier in a build system vs a random rolling one. Obviously that also depends on the complexity of the system (you may want a do-over in Shadowrun or a Gurps thing, less so in simpler games for example).
 
I'll just say I think sometimes people should try playing hobbled characters. If only to find out what life is like when you just don't give a damn.

I've been playing since the early 1980s. With hundreds of groups at homes, cons, clubs, and churches. In all that time I've never run into a GM who would let me play a hobbled character. I've had some that refused to let me even play an unoptimized character. As in they will take my character, redo it, and hand it back better for the game and system.

Very specifically, I've never had a GM let me play a Vagabond in Rifts or a Beggar in Stormbringer/Elric/etc. In every case the person running the game wouldn't let me play an underpowered character. (edited would to wouldn't)

I'm sure some of you out there would let me play such a character, but "in the wild" I've never seen it happen.

I guess I just don’t understand the need for all the PCs to be balanced or why someone can’t have fun with a mechanically inferior character. Have you guys never had a mid to high level party where someone died or a new player joined resulting in a first level character joining the party?

While I am not a fan of class and level systems, I do play them. Not once in all my time has the group made a player whose character has died come back at 1st or starter level. It's always been either the average or the lowest level character (it's usually a set amount of XP). Even point buy games the new character would get some points unless it was session one.

One trend I have seen in some of the circles I move in for games with random generation is to have everyone to roll stats, the group pick one of the sets of rolls to be the “stat array” everyone has to use for their character. It’s a feel good technique to offset the perceived unfairness of random rolls. It isn’t one I like but I submit it for those that may like it.

I've seen many variations on this and it's been very common in my experience. I've played with many groups that flat out won't allow any low stats.

All that said, as a GM, I have a strong preference for letting each player make their character any way they want. I explain the setting and style of the game, they can make the character any way they want, within the rough power level I described. They can roll, point buy, pick, or make it up. I have only once had to dial down a character's power and that was a young player who needed some minor adjustment and questions as to "why" and they did dial it down without complaint. In nearly every other case they come in lower powered than what I would allow.

I will typically have new players just tell me what they want and I'll make it.

And, on the gripping hand, I LOVE classic Traveller random character generation with death during character generation. But I always figured everyone made up a bunch of characters and picked one of the survivors that fit best with the group. Which I later learned was not the case, but that's how I feel about random generation in general. I will make up a bunch of characters and pick the one that fits best or speaks to me the most (or fills in a needed slot, I've played Clerics a LOT). I've yet to have a GM say no to me, though I'm certain some here claim they wouldn't allow it.
 
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I use the previous experience rules (I run RQ1 - so they are rather random). Some character types get some really nice starting skills out of that (the infamous elf, who rolled almost perfect stats, so got +15% to most skills due to high INT who also was a rich noble ended up almost immediately qualifying for Rune Priest, and was a few adventures off from qualifying for Rune Lord - that character reminded me WHY I had stopped allowing elf PCs, their INT is just too good - fortunately the player turned very unreliable and we evicted him, though he was also coming close to eviction for poor sportsmanship - throwing tantrums AND crowing about his power).

There are a few cults where you can get to rune level fairly quickly. Waha pretty much only needed 75% or 90% in Oratory as I recall. I had a character who used to make extensive use of befuddle and oratory to get enemies fighting their comrades, so the oratory skill of the character shot up. It didn't take all that long to make the requirements for a priest.
 
I've been playing since the early 1980s. With hundreds of groups at homes, cons, clubs, and churches. In all that time I've never run into a GM who would let me play a hobbled character. I've had some that refused to let me even play an unoptimized character. As in they will take my character, redo it, and hand it back better for the game and system.

Very specifically, I've never had a GM let me play a Vagabond in Rifts or a Beggar in Stormbringer/Elric/etc. In every case the person running the game would let me play an underpowered character.

I'm sure some of you out there would let me play such a character, but "in the wild" I've never seen it happen.



While I am not a fan of class and level systems, I do play them. Not once in all my time has the group made a player whose character has died come back at 1st or starter level. It's always been either the average or the lowest level character (it's usually a set amount of XP). Even point buy games the new character would get some points unless it was session one.



I've seen many variations on this and it's been very common in my experience. I've played with many groups that flat out won't allow any low stats.

All that said, as a GM, I have a strong preference for letting each player make their character any way they want. I explain the setting and style of the game, they can make the character any way they want, within the rough power level I described. They can roll, point buy, pick, or make it up. I have only once had to dial down a character's power and that was a young player who needed some minor adjustment and questions as to "why" and they did dial it down without complaint. In nearly every other case they come in lower powered than what I would allow.

I will typically have new players just tell me what they want and I'll make it.

And, on the gripping hand, I LOVE classic Traveller random character generation with death during character generation. But I always figured everyone made up a bunch of characters and picked one of the survivors that fit best with the group. Which I later learned was not the case, but that's how I feel about random generation in general. I will make up a bunch of characters and pick the one that fits best or speaks to me the most (or fills in a needed slot, I've played Clerics a LOT). I've yet to have a GM say no to me, though I'm certain some here claim they wouldn't allow it.
I’ve played “hobbled” characters across the US and now online with GMs across the world, sorry you were deprived of the experience.
 
I like mostly-random character generation because I can start with an archetypal or generic character and get to know them through play, and because it takes me out of my comfort zone by making me adapt to something unfamiliar. With non-random character generation I feel like I have to know everything about the character before play starts (their background, their personality, all of their quirks and distinctive bits) which is not how I like to play, plus it usually means that I end up falling back on one of a handful of "stock" characters, which creates extra frustration because the system usually doesn't give enough points to create the character as-envisioned (or requires deep system familiarity to know how to do it - including pre-planning an advancement "build") so you have to compromise and create a character that's not quite what you wanted to play, which to me feels like sort of the worst of both worlds.
 
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